Wednesday, August 29, 2018

“A Real Relationship”


"A Real Relationship"


    The leadership of the Holy Spirit in the lives of born again believers does not involve programming, but rather personal illumination, encouragement, challenge, and enabling to respond to God in faith and faithfulness.

   "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Romans 8:14).

    Our complete dependence on the Lord for the living of the Christian life does not preclude our role of a chosen trust, submission, and obedience to God.  The Lord Jesus Christ made possible and actual in us a living relationship wherein we make free determinations to walk in God's Spirit and Truth.  This is the primary meaning of our Lord's declaration to His disciples: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:36).  The context of the passage speaks of our liberation from the mastery of sin.  Through our Lord's death, resurrection, ascension, and giving of the indwelling Holy Spirit, believers become free from the tyranny of unrighteousness.  This makes possible choices to trust and obey Him, as led and enabled by His Spirit.

    "When ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness… but now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life" (Romans 6:20:21).  

     Our newness of life in Christ liberates us to consistently and increasingly trust and obey God.  Thus, our Heavenly Father has no need to program or coerce us as robots, but rather to lead us to the threshold of decisions whereby we confidently avail ourselves of His guidance and provision of enabling.  Thereby we genuinely love Him, and thereby we walk with Him in an authentic relationship and fellowship.  "I will love Thee, o Lord my strength" declared David, who even in the limited experience of the Old Testament saints realized the truth of a chosen devotion to God, as based on a realized dependence for His leadership and enabling (Psalm 18:1).  For New Testament saints indwelt by the Holy Spirit, such truth bears even more significance and power.   "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Phillipians 4:13).  The free determination of David - "I will love Thee" - unites with the grace-based confidence of Paul - "I can… through Christ."  The Spirit of God continually leads rather than coerces us to such a life of genuine love, faith, and devoted choices to a real relationship with God rather than a forced fealty that would mean nothing to either Him or ourselves.

"As for me, I will come into Thy house in the multitude of Thy mercy."
(Psalm 5:7)
"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure."
(Philippians 2:12-13)

Weekly Memory Verse
   Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man.
(Psalm 60:11)

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